In the wake of Tuesday’s heinous attacks, we must await our nation’s search for justice and we must not attack those who are not guilty.

“Victories will be realized by the assassin only if he can succeed in creating hatred and lawlessness, for vengeance sake, in good men who loved justice and loved  men.”

Written yesterday, those words would have served as an astonishment to a nation of angry witnesses to the terrorism that racked New York City and Washington, D.C . Tuesday.

They were, however written in these very pages on Nov. 25, 1963, in a letter to the editor written by Garland McAdoo . Their age, 38 years, does not lessen their relevance or impact.

Many in the media are referring to what happened yesterday in New York City, Pittsburg and Washington as the new terrorism or the new warfare.

But to those of a certain generation—our generation—the tactics are the only thing new about yesterday’s attack. Those of us in college today have grown up in the era of the pregnable American—we have seen our federal building burn, our trade centers fall, our students shot down in their schools. It has left us weary of terrorism—both from within and without—but no less sensitive to its toll.

It’s for that reason that we must bear that sensitive and share it, feeling unselfconsciously the range of emotions that such a tragedy creates: anger, extreme grief, empathy for those lost and those who lost them.

What we must not do, however, is vent that anger on those among us who may share links—cultural or otherwise—with those we believe responsible. There is no certainty about who perpetrated Tuesday’s heinous acts; what is certain is that no one among our N.C . State community had anything to do with them.

The assassin has struck. Whether we will value justice or allow that assassin to create lawlessness and hate is in our hands.